Six Arguments for Film

*previously posted as "The Film Re-Revolution"
By Phillip Matarrese

Now, there has been a lot of talk recently about the new digital wave and the replacement of film as a strong, viable medium.  Most of the people who know me or my brother know that we are both film snobs and proud of it... and though I will try to keep my emotions out of this debate, it is hard to when the idea of making movies on film with the intention of theatrical exhibition was the driving force behind the choosing of my career.  So, please indulge me and let me get the ranting and raving out of the way first...

I LOVE film, it is more flexible, better looking, longer lasting and simply easier then any digital format at this time.  Does this mean the digital formats have no place in creative artistic expression or the motion picture industry?  Absolutely not, digital formats and the advancing technology have a tremendously important role to play in our industry as well as other art forms and industries.  However, there are many myths that the general public or uniformed filmmaker have bought into which have the potential to cause serious harm to our industry. 

Almost every cinematographer I meet says the same thing, “If I could shoot on film then I would.”  I say to them, arm yourselves with the knowledge and the logical reason to educate your directors and producers on the benefits of film.  The power is in our hands and we must demand quality in our industry and in our art form.  However, this isn’t always just a decision of emotion but a decision of facts and numbers.  I have decided to write down a few of my arguments to help arm our pro-film cinematographers in order to help then spread the message of the new Film Re-Revolution. 

(1) Film is more flexible then digital.  Yes, you can do a lot in the digital post-production world these days, but the extent of what you are capable of doing is still limited by one thing… the initially captured information.  The limiting factor still comes down to what you captured on the day… on set.  True, you can do a lot in post to save an otherwise worthless shot, but you can’t completely fix a bad looking image.

You always try to make sure to keep most of the lighting in your frame within an acceptable range of under and over exposure to your t-stop, but there is a certain point within the film curve where you long have visible information in the shadows or highlights.  However, even if an image is so over exposed that parts of it are blown out, there are still ways to retain the information in the highlights through various printing techniques.  Now the problem with the digital curve is that at a certain point on the top end of the curve, the range plateaus and flat lines, meaning there is a point where no information can be pulled from the areas that are blown out.  This point of no return is much lower on the digital latitude curve then it is on the film latitude curve.  You have more flexibility to save a shot with a film negative then you do with digital acquisition.

On the flip side, though digital mediums were originally designed to handle low light situations, there is still the high risk of image noise in an under exposed image while capturing on a digital censor.  Film is much more tolerant to retaining a range of exposures so you can still get an acceptable and usable image even if you under or over expose your image.

(2) Film is still better quality then any digital on the market today.  Seriously… the idea of HD, 2K and 4K resolution is, exactly that- a measurement of resolution.  4K is about 4096×2304 pixels in resolution.  There are some digital camera that now capture in 4K and there are plans to go past that into 8K or beyond…  but, right now 4K still cannot compare to the image quality of 35mm film negative(4K does not equal 35mm film, look it up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_film#Resolution). 

And when there finally is a digital camera that can match the image quality of 35mm film negative, then we’ll just move on to 60mm.  And even when the resolution of digital technology reaches the quality of 60mm, we’ll just start shooting IMAX (70mm sideways=larger negative space).

Another thing to consider is the physical and technical make up of how each medium is captured and how that translates to the perception of our human eye.

The digital image is, obviously made up of a square matrix of square pixels.  This matrix takes the curved lines captured by the lens and organizes them into a pattern made up of squared parts, which, when expanded, creates the illusion of a curved shapes.  This idea, no matter how small the pixels get, still goes against the fundamental microscopic make up of our environment(very few straight lines exist in nature, of course).  This clearly posses a very distinct problem in creating a natural looking image.

I mean, have you even wondered why some movies, commercials or TV shows look just slightly different to your eyes?  You can’t seem to put your finger on it, but you know that there is something there…?  Well, this can be attributed to how our human eye works.  On the back surface of the eyeball sits the retina, covered in color and contrast receptors that allow us to see and interpret light, thus allowing us to see and recognize shapes.  Essentially all we are really seeing are the reflection of light on objects and surfaces of the world around us.  This light reflection travels trough the iris and pupil and hit the back of our eyeball.  The light receptors which capture this light is a random pattern of cone shaped receptors and rod shaped receptors.  The cones detect light color and the rods detect contrast(black, white or shade of grey).
• http://kidshealth.org/kid/htbw/eyes.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye#Rods_and_cones

Celluloid works in a very similar fashion.  There is a polyester film base with layers of light sensitive film emulsion on it.  The film emulsion faces the gate(the hole in which light passes from the lens and hits the film).  The emulsion is light sensitive plasma made up of a gelatin that holds tiny particles of silver halide crystals, which react when exposed to light.  This gelatin is a random mix of these silver halides, not a matrix of straight lines.  This process of expose makes the projected film image feel more natural, realistic and akin to our human eyes.

The digital image will always, subconsciously, look different then our eyes because of the squared matrix in which the image is captured and then displayed with.

(3) 100 years, and beyond!  Film has a 100 year known shelf life.  I say known because, well, to be quite honest, film has only been around for a little over 100 years.  We don’t actually know the maximum lifespan of a celluloid negative, but we have hit the hundred-year mark.  Obviously new advances in technology and preservation techniques will further that estimated time, but, for now, 100 years isn’t too bad.

Digital… well, it’s a bit shorter then that.  Right now, the longest estimated shelf life is 15 years.  Now, it’s not simply a numbers game… It gets a little more complicated then that.  You see, because technology is moving to quickly now, a concept known as technological obsolescence has come into play making it harder(economically and practically) to store the digital information.  This is because every few years, when a new system, file type, or program comes out- the entire catalog of information must be taken off the shelf and reformatted so it can be used and accessed in the future.  For more information on this, please download the 2007 Digital Dilemma Report put out by the Sci-Tech Council of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: http://www.oscars.org/council/digital_dilemma/index.html

(4) “But with digital I never have to worry about flashing a roll of film accidentally  or those other problems ever again!”  …flashing a roll of film, for all you none filmmakers out there, is when a roll of film is accidentally exposed to light before it’s been processed.  Basically this means that you will end up with a white image unusable and unsalvageable.

Yes, with new technologies come faster processors, smaller file sizes and quicker data transfer, but there is anther side to this technology revolution that is not talked about.   Both film and digital have an even number of physical threats that can affect the capture or preservation of the information.  A film can might get flashed accidentally, the film can be put through an x-ray machine, the film lab could screw up and the developing bath could disintegrate the emulsion.  But a digital capture runs the same physical risks that film does.  A hard drive could be dropped on accident, a hard drive or laptop could get crushes by the camera truck, a magnet could accidentally pass over the hard drive or media card, or the DIT could accidentally delete the files as he transfers them to a film labs’ data storage system.  Digital filmmaking does not sidestep the physical risks we run(and always try to minimize) while making our film.

Now, there is the other category of harm that could befall digital data… this is what I call the “non-physical harm factors”… until I come up with a better name.  These are things like… well, honestly, the unexplained corruption of a hard drive with all your raw footage on it… or a patch not working on your edit program because you started editing with an older version of the software and it hasn’t been updated… or even something like a computer virus.  These are things that you have no physical control over, risk factors that happen without warning, without explanation and without solution.

You are susceptible to water, heat, moisture and humidity, power kick outs(when a cable is accidentally pulled) and having to work with kid gloves around a delicate and sometimes temperamental camera system.

Yes, freak accidents happen with celluloid, too, but because it is a tangible medium, there are always tangible explanation and most often tangible solutions to the problems we face.  My question for all directors and producers out there is this: why do you choose to put your film, your art and your money in the hands of an inconsistent and accident prone medium that has not been properly tested and stabilized?  You’ve worked had on your story, on your idea, with your actors and with your sets to get them just right… why not use a format that allows the minimum amount of risk, the maximum amount of quality and longest shelf life of any motion picture technology to date?

 
(5) Digital is not always worth the cost.  It takes a lot more money then people think to make a digital moving image to look as good as film… so much more money that its cheaper to just soot on film.  A lot of people think that they eliminate a lot the cost of production by shooting on digital when, in fact, this is not the case.  Yes, they don’t pay for processing or film stock purchasing, but these costs get made up and compounded in the digital post-production many times over.

You still need the same number of camera crew members(1st AC, 2nd AC, and loader) to keep the convoluted digital workflow going.  The loader’s responsibilies are pretty much the same as with film, only instead of downloading a magazine, they are downloading the cards and hard drives. (*a quick note about the RED camera.  A problem that came up was that the camera overheats so much that the flange between the censor and the lens moves with the expanding metal, changing the focal distance dramatically)

A lot of people also think that they need to rent fewer lights with digital acquisition.  I can tell you from many years of experience that this is simply not the case, in fact, you often need more lights to get the image to look anywhere near the clarity of film.  The size of lights and the theory behind lighting is based on a doubling and halving method(each f-stop is measured in half or double the amount of light of the preceding stop).  Lighting for film is an exact science with inexact creativity.  Digital censors at of the writing of this article do not react to light in the film does, rendering the exact science of our current lighting systems useless.  All of a sudden I find myself having to call for a light two or three times larger then that I would normally call for because I know that the Director of Photography will end up asking me for more light.  I have also found myself in situations that would normally require no lighting where I have had to pull out medium to large sized units just to “bring up the ambience” so the image would not read noisy.  More light needed means more lights, which means more stands and more cables, which means more crew, which means more power, which means a bigger generator.  The prices skyrocket very easily!

And that doesn’t include all the technical problems that often occur that take time to fix and special techs to fix them.  Time is money in our industry and we try to streamline things the best way possible.  All of a sudden you loose control over your medium(creative or otherwise) because now if there is a problem with a digital piece of equipment then you can’t fix it.  Now you have to send it back to the rental house and one of their certified techs has to fix it… there is no jury rigging in the digital work; you can’t just piece it together.  You are now at the mercy of this technology that is supposed to make things easier for you, but it can often make matter even more complicated then they need to be.

Now, forget all of this… lets just talk about a basic principal.  As much as you can, you try to treat any digital camera as if it were film.  However, no matter how any times the director promises to treat the digital tape or hard drive as if it was a 1000ft film magazine, they always end up shooting more volume of footage then if it were film.  now, this isn’t the director’s fault, this is merely an inherent flaw with the digital design… the idea of endless possibility and supply along with instant gratification.  You can try and try and try to only do a few takes but even the best of us slip up and “waste tape”.  Now, this causes a problem in post-production because you now have to spend that much more time logging footage, transferring footage, looking through the extra takes and choosing which of the 15 takes you actually like.  Post-Production is arguably the most expensive part of the process and you don’t want to be stuck in a $300 an hour online edit suit editing your 4K RED camera footage while trying to decide if it is take 4 or take 12 that you like the best.  I am not saying that I’ve never seen a take 12 on a film set, I am just suggesting that sometimes the forced limitations on a medium actually help to limit our choices so we can make quicker decisions and move our project forward to completion.

(6) Consistency, Consistency, Consistency.  Film is simplicity at its best.  It is merely light passing through a small hole and photochemically embedding itself onto light sensitive material.  It’s a simple process with superior effect and the best part… it’s consistent.  There are already so many things that can go wrong while making a movie, our jobs as creative artists and expert technicians is to minimize these dangers and attempt to create as much consistency as possible.  Film offers that consistency.
Now, I call on crewmembers, Cinematographers, Directors and Producers alike who want to join me in this Film Re-Revolution to ask these questions and consider these thoughts.  I ask you to do all that you can to present the facts and numbers and to look at all the possibilities before you discount using film due to budgetary restraints.  Let’s bring back the demand to shoot on film and take the creative control back to the hands of the creative artists.

I quote the Digital Dilemma Report in saying: “The place to start is here.  The time to start is now.”